Hello Odder, and welcome to the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! This website is for coordinating and discussing all Wikimedia projects. You may find it useful to read our policy page. If you are interested in doing translations, visit Meta:Babylon. You can also leave a note on Meta:Babel or Meta:Metapub (please read the instructions at the top of the page before posting there). If you would like, feel free to ask me questions on my talk page. Happy editing!

Are there any questions I can answer to persuade you to change to a support vote for my Steward candidacy? My cross-wiki experience does not always appear in MediaWiki logs; however my experience on staff at WMF involved a lot of cross-wiki monitoring, even if that monitoring did not necessarily require editing. Furthermore, I worked with translations on CentralNotice in meta, which does not log publicly to contributions. In these, and other ways, I've developed a sufficient amount of experience in cross-wiki activities that I will be comfortable as a Steward. With regards to monolingualism, the other chief opposition reason, some opposes have reconsidered and switched to yes after seeing that I am capable of understanding Romance languages and with the assistance of machine translation, I am able to effectively communicate in them as well. If there is anything else I can do that would help convince you to support, please let me know. Regards, ⇒SWATJesterSon of the Defender 04:39, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Any reason not to geolocalise the banner to Poland? It probably doesn't make much difference here, but any refinement is usually appreciated. :-) Nemo 06:55, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

+1 - I'd think that a geotargeted banner would be a much more effective. Philippe (WMF) 08:22, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Hey Odder, I noticed your message to Nemo at User_talk:Nemo_bis#Re:_CentralNotice.2FCalendar and thought I'd offer my help setting up central notice if needed. However, while we certainly can set up a campaign to go to 'Poland only all projects' and 'all polish projects' (it would be two campaigns but that's ok) I'm not really sure that's the best idea. I totally think you should have some English banners and run on English Wikipedia and maybe other languages as well (or all) especially since it looks like roughly 16% of Polish visitors go to the English Wikipedia (and 1% go to Russian). Looking at the statistics for Oct 2010-2011 6.5-7% of Polish Wikipedia traffic comes from outside of Poland (Including my grandfather who has actually made some small edits too :) ) I'm not sure it makes sense to send banners asking for tax donations to most of those people since the majority of them won't be able too. Jalexander 11:12, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Odder, I am afraid that the agreement specifies geo-targeted banners and not language targeted banners. Kindly, please, have the banners directed to Poland only. This is a violation of our agreement. Thanks :-) Melamrawy (WMF) 19:12, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

No worries, thanks for your fast response :) Please, let us know if there is anything else that we can help with. Cheers Melamrawy (WMF) 19:32, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi! I just want to thank you and give you this barnstar for your help with the translation of the 2011 fundraiser! The fundraiser was the best we ever had, both in terms of the amount we collected and in terms of number of translations. We couldn't have done either one without the help we got from you and other translators. If you are interested, we made a report, which has some statistics about the translations.

And: I have one more request, and that is that you take this survey. You may have got an e-mail about it, and if you did, please ignore this. But if you didn't it would be great if you would take this survey too, so we can learn to improve the translation experience.

Hey Odder, I just nocied you're creating the campaign, I have the banner created and am finishing that up (just the ZA translation left) Jalexander (talk) 12:33, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, the Afrikaans text is quite long ... I wonder if we want to cut the right picture to make room ... or could shrink the text a bit. Jalexander (talk) 12:37, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Copying below from my talk page so that you see it/doesn't fracture. Let me know if you'd prefer it over there I don't really mind either way :).

Thanks on Afrikaans, that makes sense. The revert was because it looks like I was removing the url from the interface at the same time that you were removing it via MediaWiki space. It appears that the Original included 'WikiLovesMonuments". I had copied from that and hadn't looked at it closely enough to notice yet. I just put the spaces back in sorry about that. Did you mean to remove the 'fellow' from the start? It appears that if we edit from Mediawiki space it doesn't get logged in the CN log so we should try to do it through the interface if posible though we still obviously can't do everything (I had to go in there to do a massive revert earlier when I screwed up). Going to put a bug in for that... Jalexander (talk) 12:54, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Looking good with the new text, it wraps well. FYI I also through in some css to expand the link to the whole banner (so that they can click anywhere instead of just the text). If we want the text to only underline when someone hovers over IT rather then the banner we can do that as well if people like it better. Jalexander (talk) 12:56, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

FYI, I removed that double link again... I think the weirdness you were seeing earlier was just another Mediawiki/Interface edit conflict between the two of us... it looks good right now and should only need the 1 'big' link. Are you seeing anything odd still without the double one? Jalexander (talk) 13:05, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for the massive amounts of spam on your talk page :) I have to head to bed (I shouldn't be up anyway) but obviously you can take care of it. If you need anything let me know (I was about to go to sleep earlier but a couple staff members pinged me to help MADe when they got messages from him). Always open to help. Jalexander (talk) 13:22, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Ahh, no worries. I'm fine either way and feel free to remove if you'd like, I just added the languages because I remembered them asking for it in the original request from MADe. While I tend to be strongly against using non translated materials if at all possible my personal feeling is that for smaller language communities I'm 'ok' with it being another 'generally understood' language or something like that because it allows the smaller community to see it and is sometimes the only (or at least fastest) way to have some one volunteer to translate it which can be tough otherwise. The request seemed reasonable given that these languages were smaller languages generally spoken in the region and I trusted that they knew that English would be better to show then say Afrikaans. That said, I have no strong feelings on this one so if the community has decided on a standard for WLM I'm happy to bow towards that without any kind of whine ;). Jalexander (talk) 23:48, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Hey Odder, we were working on the translations. I added our partly result on the request page. Thanks for the help. MADe (talk) 18:23, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Muchos Gracias! Sorry to disturb you again, I added three more translations :-) MADe (talk) 19:39, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi there I noticed that the Pashto Wiktionary has got a new logo with its name in Pashto and its moto also in Pashto but the way it is wriiten is wrong. You might know that arabic letters are joining writings which have three forms the initial, middle and end form. The Pashto name of wiktionary and its moto stated under the logo is correct but the letters are supposed to be joining like in the following:

ويکيسيند

يو وړيا سيند

But now the text is like in the following which is not the correct form of writing:

وي ک ي س ي ن د

ي و وړي ا پ و ه ن ډغ ون ډ

Please correct this mistake and make it as it is mentioned in the first place with larger fonts.

Hi, Odder. :) I have an answer to your question about the community logo registration. Application was filed 7 July 2012, with a "first use in commerce" claim of December 2006. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 21:41, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello Odder. About font of ckb Wikipedia logo: this font (Pak Type Tehreer) is very childish, the font is like my small niece's handwriting! Be sure, I know better than you and LangCom! You don't know any thing about Arabic script and it is very natural! Please change this font to another font (like Amiri). Thank you.--Calak (talk) 20:19, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm just heading off now, but thanks for working on those tvars (still got to get my head around them!). I think there's a guideline though to keep the <translate> == Header == </translate> intact instead of putting it inside the = signs as that means translators know it's a header? Thehelpfulone 00:38, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I went on Wikitech and tallied up the servers, posting the info to the talk page. I am not sure what their relationship is with one another or how to find that information. WhisperToMe (talk) 17:36, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I found the info on the network design. Is this what you are looking for? WhisperToMe (talk) 17:42, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

You are welcome :) - It was good to encourage me to post those links so people can make informed decisions. WhisperToMe (talk) 17:51, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

The discussion is on-going on-wiki. Comments right now suggest we use English text in the logo. Anyway, the current logo isn't appropriate since only a small portion of the Cree language family use and understand the Canadian Syllabics. Thanks for the follow-up, I'll keep you updated. Amqui (talk) 19:12, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

.. and for that, I have only recently understood that I 'm not the right person to answer to a similar and important question. It will be better if you will ask about the right eml-logo to our administrator over there, the eml:User:Mirandolese that knows all the various and controverses things about it. Best regards, --Gloria sah (talk) 22:51, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Regarding this edit, tvar and similar constructs won't work outside of Meta-Wiki, as I understand it. And the <code> tag doesn't escape output in the same way that the <nowiki> tag does. I received a message on my English Wikipedia talk page about these issues. :-( This is an example of a bad edit. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:03, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi MZMcBride, thanks for the reminder. I, too, noticed the problem, quite soon after I've sent the issue out. I did check the code manually after invoking a Lua module created by Guillaume, but I didn't notice that the tvar at the beginning of the newletter didn't get replaced by a working link in the English version (it looks like a bug to me, perhaps I should fill it in Bugzilla so I re-opened bug #46925). As far as the <code> tag is concerned, it seems to work on Meta, but for a reason unknown to me, it didn't work anywhere else. I'm not sure where the problem lies here, so I'll try to make it not happen again by creating a simple publication manual (checklist) that we (I) could go through when publishing next issues of the newsletter. Again, thanks for your helpful message, I appreciate it. odder (talk) 19:37, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

This is beyond weird — I am responsible for all of the content of this issue and apparently have forgotten I had used <nowiki>, in the end… It looks like the tag got lost when I used the Tech news Lua module written by Guillaume. odder (talk) 22:10, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Sometimes you have to null-edit the /en version (or other translation) to get it to update. PiRSquared17 (talk) 22:41, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

I did check the contents of the message before I started the delivery, but didn't notice the tvar not working in the English version. As I wrote above, this looks like a bug to me, and I'll try to fill it on Bugzilla in the coming minutes. odder (talk) 19:37, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Mate, when you have time, please check the topic above. Thanks! Cainamarques (talk) 03:56, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice, but since Tech News #31 was the last issue I was involved with, I cannot really help with your problem; I suggest you contact Guillaume instead. odder (talk) 10:06, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello, the Wikimedia Foundation would like your feedback on the Participation Support Program! We have created a brief survey to help us better understand your experience participating in the program and how we can improve for the future. You are being selected to participate in our survey because you submitted or commented on Participation Support requests in the past.

For the past few months, Legoktm has built a replacement to the current message delivery system called MassMessage. MassMessage uses a proper user interface form (no more editing a /Spam subpage), works faster (it can complete a large delivery in minutes), and no longer requires being on an access list (any local administrator can use it). In addition, many tiny annoyances with the old system have been addressed. It's a real improvement! :-)

You can test out MassMessage here: testwiki:Special:MassMessage. The biggest difference you'll likely notice is that any input list must use a new {{#target:}} parser function. For example, {{#target:User talk:Jimbo Wales}} or {{#target:User talk:Jimbo Wales|test2.wikipedia.org}}. For detailed instructions, check out mw:Help:Extension:MassMessage.

If you find any bugs, have suggestions for additional features, or have any other feedback, drop a note at m:Talk:MassMessage. Thanks for spamming! --MZMcBride (talk) 05:25, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Actually, if someone could collate open questions, they would likely get answered now. I imagine the team is prepped to respond to input since they posted that blog entry. And in fact, most questions I can see have been answered - just not inline. For instance, most questions about how communal-marks work have been answered broadly in the updated details about that process. If a subfacet of a broad question was not answered, this was likely not intentional. –SJtalk 10:30, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

There are at least a dozen unanswered questions. 5 by Baruneju, several months old, I already remembered to Geoff on his talk page a few weeks ago. I'm weary of making a list of links to unanswered questions because then the WMF might say they are suddenly legally obliged not to answer those users.

On your pet peeve, I'm sorry and I understand, I try not to do that. It's however an obvious consequence of the fact that you are the only board member actively engaged in discussions of interest for the community, and that the community feels WMF staff never cares about the community's opinion and never answers "ordinary people" (a feeling reinforced by the silence, the legal excuses for silence, polls ignored by the WMF, polls started by the WMF where only alternatives appreciated by the WMF are provided, with one-sided context and possibly illegal promises, and where the results are even misrepresented claiming there is wide support for the option in minority, just because the WMF likes it more). Community members feel that only deities/saints can protect them from the WMF staff, and you are one such saint; one shouldn't take the name of deities in vain, but it's human to do so. :) --Nemo 11:33, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Hello. Since you seem to be familiar with logo issues, and you have already interacted a bit with User:Espreon, I think you should contact him regarding the Old English Wiktionary logo (ang:wikt:User talk:Espreon seems to be a good place). PiRSquared17 (talk) 03:32, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Your claims about ArbCom transparency are false. I can point you to many times they voted in secret and never announced the result nor which way people voted. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:09, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

You should know that if the 100% status is not updated in a translation like your recent translations for tech news, it is NOT by editing the source translation that this will change. In fact this makes things worse, because once the updated source is updated, ALL existing translations will have their score lowered.

The problem is caused by a current bug of the Translation tool, that does not fully compute the status: the last translation item edited (or confirmed) is NOT counted and still ignored in the generated page (but all previous edits/confirmations are counted and included in the generated page). Apparently, there a problem of synchronisation in caches, because once the edited data is saved, it is not immediately visible to the tool itself when it will call some code to recompute the status of the page, and to regenerate the full page from the base template currently in the version marked for translation; or may be the status and page regeneration is being performed before, instead of after, the valided item is saved.

Instead of editing the source (which does not have the expected effect), you just need to revalidate an existing item. Personnally I use this workaround: I just edit the item for the page title: in the edit box, I press SPACE (this allows the Submit button to be activated) then imediately BACKSPACE to remove that added SPACE, and revalidate this item (this is a TRUE null-edit, I don't change anthing). No change is actually saved for the item, but the page statistic is now updated correctly, and the fully translated page is updated without forgetting the last edited item.

Note: to perform a null edit on an item, you should do that only on an item that has a translation that is effectively validated (and does not need an update): do not null-edit an item in some language you don't know and that displays a "yellow warning" on top of the text, because this would validate something that actually needed to be changed. For this reason I choose the page title item, or an item that has been validated in many other validated pages in the trnaslation memory, such as "See also", "OK", or pages with identical structures as the currently translated page containing the same items.

Each time I finish a translation, I reedit an additional item to resave it without change (or I reedit the last edited item to save it again without change using the workaround needed to activate the Save submission button). This way the status is correct and the generated page contains the last items I added or edited. This current bug affects ALL translatable pages (at least on Meta, but not on Betawiki/Translatewiki.net, which does not have the same system of page caches as Wikimedia sites: the latter Wikimedia sites use a much more complex structure for synchronizing servers and proxies), not just the Tech news pages.

Thanks @verdy_p, I'll keep this in mind for the future. I apologize for breaking some of the existing translations with my last edit on Tech/News/2014/02; I noticed you had to revert the bot because of that. I find your message very helpful, and will use your workaround until this irritating bug is fixed. Coincidentally, do you know which bug this is? I haven't checked the Translate extension's code for that, but I'm quite sure someone else had already encountered this broken behaviour before us and filed a bug. Thank you for your help with the last issue, I really appreciate it. odder (talk) 21:28, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I have not reverted the FuzzyBot (which runs automatically and asynchronously, but too soon after we validate a new translation item, i.e. before it is visible in the database caches used by this FuzzyBot). The bug is in the way FuzzyBot monitors changes, or in the timing by which the Translation tool alerts the FuzzyBot process. Apparently this Bot does not connect directly and the same way to the database storing translated units and groups, and some time is needed.

I just revalidated one item (using null edits the way I describe) per translated page, to update again its completion status in statistics.

Note that changing the descriptive translation status in the combo box (at top of the translation tool page once you have selected a translation group to work on) has no effect on recomputing the completion levels, or the multi-colored completion bar at bottom of page, or on the generated translated pages, it is just informative and displayed in a column of the Special page listing all translations, but it does not impact the statistics at all. verdy_p (talk) 22:08, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

What verdy_p says is correct. I often null-edit the title translation to update. However, for pages with many translations, this can be tedious. An alternative is to mark for translation, then dummy edit (not null edit, but dummy edit: add a space or so, but do not remove it), then mark for translation again. This will force FuzzyBot to update the translations. You can then remove the dummy if you want. PiRSquared17 (talk) 22:26, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Addition: I don't know how to look for bugs in Bugzilla, eah time I have tried to use it, the developers did not like that we send them bug, or invalidated them. That's why I prefer for now alerting translators so that they also submit their opinions and confirm those many existing bugs in the Translation too (some of them exist since long, and nobody is seriously working about them, the tool was only developed apparently for the needs of admins on BetaWiki/Translate/net, that don't care at all about many issues that don't exist in their much simpler structure of servers (and no cache to work with). Only the MediaWiki developers can work on these issues in the tool (that was not developed by them ! So they do not really understand how the tool works and how to tune it).

In summary: we have to live with these bugs, and need to use such tricky workarounds, until there are enough users confirming these bugs and pointing developers of the Translation tools to multiple discussions describing the issues. Posting a bug without links to these discussions constantly fails (I fear that developers of the Translation tool are lazzy or don't care about how their tool can be integrated on Wikimedia sites, they provide it "as is" with minimal support).

Some day the translation tool will be rewritten by MediaWiki developers themselves, including developers for its accessibility and an easier interface. The administration options in the Special pages also have severe bugs/limitations in the way they manage translation groups.

And there are also bugs in the translation memory (which does not find accurate 100% translations and propose something else).

There are also bugs in how the MediaWiki code is parsed in the Translation tool, e.g. "tvar" $names containing hyphens (-) or spaces or underscores are truncated, the tool proposes inexistant "tvar" $names. For this reason "tvar" names should contain only letters or digits (and no punctuation or spaces): this is not checked. The tool also bugs on some translation items containing verbatim "$" (e.g. in financial reports of the WMF). It also cannot parse correctly multi-level lists (with lines starting by "**" or "::"). The translation id tags were also incorrectly chosen. It cannot parse as well the transclusion of templates (and cannot display their effective rendering).

This parser also has bugs in the way it manage the source language. It does not offer an easy conversion from Templates currently using LangSwitch. This parser needs to be reworked. It is also too complex for most common cases where the translation of a single page should not require marking a page for translation by an administrator, when the source page can be edited and viewed by anyone (nothing should require an action by a Translation admin, if the page to translate does not require reviewer privileges: the privileges to mark a page for translation should be transfered to reviewers only). The "translate" tags in the source page should also be silently discared when viewing the source pages.

The tool should also not assume that the source is in English : this clearly limits the international interaction by allowing only English-speaking users to create and controbute translation sources instead of offering interaction between all languages, by declaring that the source page is just in an unspecified language or posibly multilingual, using the "und" or "mul" code for the source, so that a true English translation can be produced from a source in any other language (it is stupid to assume that pages discussing issues specific to Chinese or German will need to be sourced in English only when in fact it will be sourced in another language from which English will become a derived translation generated by the tool). We should be able to mark a source as being in another language in order to instruct other translators about the most accurate source that can be used as reference for other languages including English. verdy_p (talk) 22:42, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I am planning to work on the project titled "Tools for mass migration of legacy translated wiki content" this summer under Google Summer of Code. I have drafted a proposal for the same over the past few weeks. This project is going to help the translation adminstrators like you in a great way, as it would completely automate the tedious manual task of preparing a page for translation and then importing the translations into the Translate extension. You can check the proposal page for detailed information on how I plan to accomplish this.

As you would be an end user of this tool, it would be great if you could go through the proposal and provide feedback/suggestions. Your feedback would definitely help me improve the proposal as well help in creating an even better tool. You can do the same on the discussion page of the proposal or reply here, whichever is convenient for you. I look forward to hearing from you! Thank you!

Greetings. Awesome job on #12 :) I see you're getting the hang of simplifying text! It looks great to me. I've just added one item about the Parsoid slowness. Let me know if I can do anything else to help. guillom 17:15, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

@guillom: Thank you for adding the Parsoid item. As I froze #12, there is very little to do now, except the Monday publication. Enjoy your Sunday! odder (talk) 22:01, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

@guillom: I just sent #12 to subscribers. Could you send the HTML e-mail to wikitech-ambassadors and do the social media posting? I sent a proposed wording to the mailing list as well. Thank you :-) odder (talk) 07:17, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Both done! I was also going to offer to send it with MassMessage, but you beat me to it :) Thank you! guillom 08:17, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

As you might have be observed, I restored this request, marking as "not done". May I suggest to strongly avoid editwarring on request pages. Leaving a note IMHO would have been more appropriate. Thank you for your understanding. --M/ (talk) 13:01, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

The reason is perfectly obvious... sysops don't have access to nonpublic info as described by the policy. Ajraddatz (talk) 01:47, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Except that they do. A fact for which I provided ample evidence. I'd like to hear from Odder. And thanks for asking, Area17.--Elvey (talk) 02:07, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

I will not get into the argument but will ask Roshni or one of the lawyers to clarify on the Privacy Policy talk page. I will say that the policy was written very explicitly to exempt normal sysops (hence why the definition says those who have access to deleted content suppressed 'beyond' admin view). I understand that the term she used for 'administrative volunteers' is confusing and I will explain to her why. However, as I said for the privacy policy earlier the opportunity to edit the policies as they stand is over. If you want to talk to the lawyers or the board you can and should as you have been doing. The text is now board approved, any substantial edit made to it is meaningless and will be removed even if we assumed that edit 'should' have been their before because it wasn't what the board voted on (small spelling/grammar changes etc are generally exempted but even those should go through the lawyers at this point). For better or worse that is the case no matter how long the request to change sat or how much you believe the lawyers and the board are wrong. If I need to fully protect the Access policy as well like I did the privacy policy I will.. but I don't think we should have to. We are never going to get to a point where everyone is 100% happy with these policies, I know I certainly am not, however in the end we have to respect that a decision will be made, and we're not the final call there. The board is. They have made their decision, at this point if it needs to be changed it needs to go through them again. Jalexander--WMF 05:13, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Jalexander, thanks for that - helps a lot to clarify the situation. As the opportunity to edit the policies as they stand is over, and at least one member of the board (Sj) sees a need for further edits, and major changes were made at the last minute, and my call to extend the comment period as a result of those major changes was not heeded, I call for a new round of edits. Are you opposed to that call? --Elvey (talk) 22:27, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Odder,

"administrative volunteers... are subject to the access to nonpublic information" -RPatel (WMF) (I do see that User:Jalexander has indicated that RPatel misspoke...)

So it's still obvious that sysops don't have access to nonpublic info as described by the policy? ORLY? I accept that the intent of at least some of the drafters is to have it not apply to sysops. But, if it's so "obvious", how come RPatel disagrees/got it wrong? The fact that RPatel disagrees/got it wrong is to me damn strong evidence that the policy is not clear and needs to be improved... and I accept that the appropriate change is not the one you reverted without so much as an edit summary, which left me feeling insulted. --Elvey (talk) 22:27, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

RPatel has little wiki experience and it has already been clarified what she meant. Also, that bug seems to reveal private info to more than administrators - anyone who looks at it, which is not limited to admins. Should everyone who can read WMF sites be covered by the access to nonpublic info policy? Quite honestly, your concerns here seem incredibly minor and I'm not sure why you're spending time fighting this. The policy is explicitly designed to not apply to admins. If you want more accountability for admins, this isn't the way you can accomplish that. Thanks, Ajraddatz (talk) 22:46, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Elvey, unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for my case) the question about whether or not to reopen it to further changes and discussion lies with the board and the legal team. So I would discuss it with them (including Sj obviously if you think he is open to it). Sadly, until I hear otherwise, I'm still preparing to make it the active policy on Friday. Jalexander--WMF 04:58, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

As a Google Summer of Code Intern, I have been working on the Mass Migration tools project for Wikimedia. We are now ready with a minimal working product. The tool helps translators and translation administrators import the old translations into the Translate Extension.

An instance of the same has been set up on labs. You can find some useful instructions on the main page.

Please test the tool and report bugs/suggestions using the link provided on the main page itself. You can have a look at the tracking bug to check already reported bugs.

Even if you disagree with the change, why shouldn't you translate information about it? Translating something does not mean one agrees with it, and besides, it would help more people learn about this controversy. PiRSquared17 (talk) 22:49, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

@PiRSquared17: I am asking every volunteer I can reach not to translate anything to do with the Foundation in protest against their action regarding the superprotect feature. Tech News is just the tip of the iceberg, but it's the tip I know best and have most influence over. I intend to keep going with my boycott & outreach until the change is reverted, and if you agree with me, I'd be glad to have you join this little initiative of mine. Thanks, odder (talk) 22:56, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with the use of the new "superprotect" level to go against community wishes on dewiki. However, translating useful information should not be discouraged. BTW why couldn't dewiki admins just sneak the JS they want in all the different skin JS pages (Monobook, Vector, etc.) or in MediaWiki:Copyright (which allows raw HTML injection and displays on most pages)? Strange of the WMF not to "superprotect" these too. PiRSquared17 (talk) 23:23, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

@PiRSquared17: It was just one de.WP admin wheel-warring with the Foundation, and it took them less than 30 minutes to superprotect MediaWiki:Common.js after #153302 was merged and emergency-deployed (on a Sunday during a week when no software deployments were scheduled). I daresay he just didn't realize that patch was coming, and then the whole de.WP community was not exactly willing to keep fighting when they knew they are, eventually, going to lose. odder (talk) 23:28, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

It's just another in a long line of WMF vs. community battles (is there a list of these e.g. WMF wiki admin desysop, community logo trademark.?). Of course, the WMF can always win with the cost of driving community members away. PiRSquared17 (talk) 23:55, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

@Odder:: In a large community, disagreements between groups is not a bad thing, it is unavoidable. The existence of "conflicts" is not a bad thing, it is just a matter of life and demonstrates that the community is vivid and can pursue different targets. This is true in the community at large, but as well between subgroups deciding on things. As long as they can coexist and largely cooperate in most areas, nothing is in danger. Competition will then start in some domains, and independant projects will appear. And it's good. Competition has always been beneficial as it allows remaining creative and forces everyone to invent better solutions, and more alternatives and test them in real life. Later a common solution will emerge and everyone will adopt it, the temporary conflict will have been resolved.

But if a conflict of interests causes a group to split and refuse to cooperate even in their common interests, attempts to split them defintely will be a waste of time and energy.

So I disagree with the form of protest that consist in "boycotting" translations. But I disagee even more when those that want to stop their cooperation are pressuring others to follow them. Everyone should remain free of his own decision.

Yes I also desagree with the way the "superadmin" power was ganted to the WMF staff and even more about how it was used in a way that does not match the publicly exposed WMF policies. I don't contest the possible need for this new privilege but I still think it is an accident and that this is now being actively discussed. Soon it will be solved, and a new policy will emerge to avoid later a similar situation. My feeling is still that the superadmin power was abused, simply because it was still not documented and used too early. This should have never happened at end of a weekend in a US office when most influent members of the Board were not even in US but in London for Wikimania, or in other holiday trips. There was absolutely no emergency in deploying the new privilege just a few days after it was developed and not really tested.

Now we know what to discuss in September. The Board will have to formulate a statement and open a new polcy page about this new adminship and about Office Staff actions and the role of the Staff in the movement (rememvber one thing: the contents of Wikipedia officially does NOT belong to the WMF: I consider that a single staff member stole the WP.DE project and abused his position, but the staff is paid by the community, and in fine is paid to follow the decisions of the community backed by the WMF board; if a staff member disagrees, he can resign his work position, or the community can decide to fire his job; the staff depends on the Board, and the Board depends on (1) the US laws and (2) the community, in all cases the community rules as long as US laws are not violated). verdy_p (talk) 05:11, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

I've seen your post related to the matter of the two admins who were blocked. I will stop translating Tech News as promised. Do you think if I posted a reply on the German Wikipedia to elaborate what happened I would be blocked too? --Asaifm (talk) 19:28, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

@Asaifm: You are welcome. Please do feel invited to take part in the discussion— a German Wikipedia admin has closed it, but I hope it will carry on, if only for a few days. odder (talk) 19:49, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Could you explain this situation? What would be the reason for these actions of the Wikimedia Foundation? Did the German Wikipedia community take any position deemed to be contrary to the purposes of the Foundation? - Fabsouza1 (talk) 14:19, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

@Fabsouza1: There is a great description of what happened at Requests for comment/Superprotect rights. Basically, a local German Wikipedia sysop got into a wheel-war with a Wikimedia Foundation employee over MediaWiki:Common.js, and the Foundation protected that page on a superprotect level so that no one else can edit it (this happened last Sunday after the Foundation implemented this new protection level). The German Wikipedia community is now protesting and having a survey to ask the Foundation to unprotect that page and remove this new protection level.

Many German Wikipedians are protesting against the way that superprotect was implemented — without any prior discussion or consultation, on a Sunday during Wikimania in London, in a matter of minutes so no one could comment on the change in Gerrit — and I am joining their protest by withdrawing my involvement in Tech News and asking every Meta translator to stop translating pages that help the Wikimedia Foundation.

I'd be glad if you joined this protest and stopped providing direct help to the Foundation — not translating Wikimedia Highlights seems like a good first step. odder (talk) 14:35, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

@Odder: It seems to me that there's a big authority abuse and censorship. There's no problem to me. By the way, I work mostly on MediaWiki site. Ok, you can count on me. - Fabsouza1 (talk) 19:01, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Why did you take that decision? - Fabsouza1 (talk) 03:47, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

@Fabsouza1: I no longer wish to be involved with translation efforts here on Meta-Wiki, and as I no longer contribute to Tech/News, I have no reason to keep the massmessage-sender flag, either. odder (talk) 08:12, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Unless you have a psychological compulsion to have all signatures the same. In that case regularize away. But maybe it's better to take a break from that page, so you don't feel that compulsion? The best, --Angus (talk) 15:15, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

@Angus: Your tone is not appreciated. Now get out of my talk page, and steer clear of it—thanks! odder (talk) 15:25, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Today, we have 562 signatures here on Meta, and another 61 on change.org, for a total of 623 signatures. Volunteers have fully translated it into 16 languages, and begun other translations. This far exceeds my most optimistic hopes about how many might sign the letter -- I would have been pleased to gain 200 siguatures -- but new signatures continue to come.

I believe this is a significant moment for Wikimedia and Wikipedia. Very rarely have I seen large numbers of people from multiple language and project communities speak with a unified voice. As I understand it, we are unified in a desire for the Wikimedia Foundation to respect -- in actions, in addition to words -- the will of the community who has built the Wikimedia projects for the benefit of all humanity. I strongly believe it is possible to innovate and improve our software tools, together with the Wikimedia Foundation. But substantial changes are necessary in order for us to work together smoothly and productively. I believe this letter identifies important actions that will strongly support those changes.

Have you been discussing these issues in your local community? If so, I think we would all appreciate an update (on the letter's talk page) about how those discussions have gone, and what people are saying. If not, please be bold and start a discussoin on your Village Pump, or in any other venue your project uses -- and then leave a summary of what kind of response you get on the letter's talk page.

Finally, what do you think is the right time, and the right way, to deliver this letter? We could set a date, or establish a threshold of signatures. I have some ideas, but am open to suggestions.

Thank you for your engagement on this issue, and please stay in touch. -Pete F (talk) 18:09, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

You may propose an extension of the consultation period on the talk page. 2 weeks is current practice, and that's what the Board talked about in the meeting. Therefore I reverted your change. Alice Wiegand (talk) 21:24, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

I said feel free to revert, so that's fine. odder (talk) 21:29, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

@Nemo: Ah well, it's really hard to tell what @MF-W had in mind when they posted this boldbald blank statement. What I had in mind is that I can't really remember the Foundation opposing the never-ending trial not to allow unregistered users to create new articles on en.WP; indeed, if I remember correctly, the idea came from a Foundation Board member (Jimmy). But yeah, I know they opposed ACTRIAL, but that wasn't about anonymous users. odder (talk) 17:54, 23 February 2015 (UTC)